Off The Wall
by Seanchaidh
Summary: Sequel to Mirror, Mirror. It's not essential to have read Mirror, Mirror or Stormy Weather before reading this one, but some things, especially later on, will make much more sense if you've read them in chronological order.
1. Chapter 1

**Off The Wall**

**Sequel to Mirror, Mirror**

**Chapter 1**

Nick Cutter hated days like these. Days when, once upon a time, he would have been stuck in a musty, university lecture theatre or cramped tutor room rather than a capacious, minimalistic office. To a man who was to the warm, dark, mysterious depths of a library or his university office, the clinical coolness and brightness of the ARC clashed with his ego.

He flicked the paper straight again and tried to read on. It was the latest report on the cleanup operation following their last anomaly. That had been a whole week ago now, but he was still getting reports in. On the good side, though, it did seem that his theory had been right and, unable to detect vibrations in Britain's shark and dolphin infested waters, the serrasalminids had been washing up on shores either emaciated through hunger or half eaten by predators they were not equipped to escape.

That was fine. He could get his head round that. No problem. It was the water level reports that were confusing him. In just one week, not only had the water levels subsided, but they were already back to normal. Once the storm had abated and the water had flowed freely through the Channel, the sea levels had dropped like a stone in just two days. He couldn't explain it, but he was no expert on geology or meteorology or whatever other 'ology' was responsible for moving water around.

He tossed the sheet onto a pile in his out-tray. Somebody would file it later, when he wasn't around to get in their way. He sighed and drummed his fingers on the desk. He was bored. Utterly bored. So bored he found himself longing for another anomaly, if only to keep his mind from drifting.

He got up and walked over to the window. He could see right down into the atrium of the ARC from here. That was a hive of activity. A complete contrast with the sterile serenity of his office. They were assembling the third version of the anomaly detector. They told him that this one was even better than either of the two that had gone before: it had all of Peta's team's upgrades, plus the ones they had added to their detector in Seahouses, plus a whole lot more that they had thought up on the way home, which Connor had expounded to them all at length until he eventually had to stop to breathe. He had even paused long enough in his explanations to let Cutter ask a question. Unfortunately the question was 'what next?' and had been answered with a fresh tirade of ideas.

"Penny for your thoughts?" Jenny's voice cut into Nick's reverie.

"Ah, I doubt they're worth that much," Nick sighed.

"I'm willing to be overcharged," Jenny smiled, walking up to stand beside him at the window. She looked down at the ant-like figures scurrying about below. "I hope they know what they're doing."

"I'm sure they do," Nick replied, confidently.

"Remind me: what did you once tell me you did with Connor's first report?"

Nick turned away from the window, grinning slightly in remembrance, and leant against the railing.

"I chucked it straight in the bin," he said with a laugh.

"And this is the man you are entrusting our future to?"

"He's always done good before, at least where technology is concerned."

"But we're talking about the kind of technology that can, and I quote, produce a black hole."

"Only a little one," Nick laughed.

"Glad I've cheered someone up this morning then!"

"Lester still giving you a hard time?"

Jenny sighed, then turned away from the window, copying Nick's action as she leaned back on the rail.

"You could say that," she replied, smoothing a stray strand of hair back into place. "Not that I blame him, of course: I should have come up with a better cover story."

"There was nothing wrong with your cover story."

"It started an EC investigation into all of our beaches before the public can be allowed access again."

"It keeps them away from the fish."

"It keeps them away from our most popular holiday resorts in the middle of summer."

Nick gave a short, sharp laugh and folded his arms. He looked up at the clock on the far wall. Nearly one o'clock. He looked over to Jenny.

"You know that drink you suggested, back at Stephen's funeral."

"Ah, that. Yes, it was rather inappropriate of me. Sorry."

"No, don't be. I was just wondering: fancy making it lunch?"

Jenny looked round, her surprise showing in her features. Nick felt the need to explain.

"I need to get out of here," he said, shrugging, "and by the sounds of it, so do you. It's lunch time anyway: Lester can't complain if we disappear for half an hour or so to get something to eat. Besides," he added, looking back over his shoulder at the window, "he's far too busy keeping an eye on Connor and his new toy!"

XXXX

"So," Lester said, his eyes fixed on the unfinished mechanism in the corner opposite the detector. "Explain to me again how this thing will work."

"We've got two options really," Connor replied, "we can either match the anomaly's magnetic polarity or oppose it."

"Which means?"

"When you talked to Nigel about this, did he use his seesaw analogy?"

"Yes," Lester said slowly.

"Right, well: that's the scenario where we oppose the polarity. When it goes north, we go south and vice versa. The theory being that the two cancel each other out."

"But?"

"Well, opposites attract and all that: it might just make the anomaly bigger."

"And the other option?"

"The imploder I told you about."

Lester's brow wrinkled ever so slightly.

"I'm confused: these aren't the same thing?"

"No."

"Then how is the imploder different?"

"Well, instead of opposing the force, and attracting it, we match it instead, and push it away. But since it's being pushed on all sides..." Connor paused expectantly.

"It gets squeezed," Lester finished.

"Well, pinched," Connor corrected, "but yeah, basically."

"Which will either shrink it, get rid of it entirely or destroy the entire world."

"Quite."

Lester stayed quite still for a few moments, then turned to look Connor full in the face.

"What," he asked, "is the worst that can happen with the first one?"

"Big, permanent hole in the space-time continuum?" Connor guessed, shrugging.

Lester nodded thoughtfully.

"Find a relatively harmless anomaly," he sighed, "preferably somewhere inconspicuous, and try the seesaw out on it."

Connor nodded and watched Lester stalk off towards Peta's team at the new detector. He turned back to look at the weird creation in front of him. It was nowhere near finished. Effectively, it was two, big, electromagnetic hoops, one within the other and sitting at right angles to each other. The idea was that they would, eventually, spin in the two different planes, creating a bubble of magnetic field. The polarity of the field would change in time with the anomaly. The only problem was they hadn't quite sorted out the spinning mechanism, or managed to synchronise the polarity changes in the two hoops, never mind matching it to an anomaly, or worked out how the magnetic field of one hoop would affect the other as they passed each other. At least opposing the field wouldn't create any black holes if it all went horribly wrong.

Connor was still lost in thought when he felt an arm loop itself though his. He looked down and grinned.

"How's Rex?" Connor asked.

"Still sulking," Abby replied, leaning her head on his shoulder. Connor nodded, silently. A smirk became visible on his face.

"What?" Abby asked, frowning.

"Nothing, nothing," Connor shook his head feigning innocence. Abby stuck an elbow in his ribs. He winced.

"Tell me," she said, glaring up at him.

"It's just slightly amusing, that's all."

"What is?"

"Well," said Connor, hesitantly, "he's not the only one sulking, is he."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Do you realise that every time you've come in here, the first thing you've done is grab my arm?"

"So what? I'm allowed, aren't I?"

"Yeah, course. It's just. Well. You don't do it when we're at home. You only do it here."

"And that's amusing because?"

"You're jealous," Connor grinned.

"Am not."

"Are too."

"Of who?"

Connor shrugged his shoulders and looked back at the machine.

"I dunno," he said, grinning. "But someone or something in this room."

"Why would I feel jealous, and I'm not saying I am jealous, but why would I feel jealous of a 'something'?"

"Just thought maybe I'd been spending too much time here, that was all," Connor shrugged. "So it's a someone then."

"I didn't say that."

"Didn't have to."


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

It was just another day at the office for Sir James Lester. Admittedly, these were preferable to the days when it was just another death threat, future predator, hidden bomb and/or megalomaniac psychopath at the office.

He flicked through the reports aimlessly. Everything was fine, he knew: there was nothing wrong with their beaches. It was just another tiresome addition to his tiresome workload. Sometimes, he questioned the wisdom of his superiors in assigning him the ARC. Occasionally, he remembered exactly why they had. That was usually when he was remembering why he had hired Becker. Between them, there wasn't much they hadn't seen in their overlapping tours of duty.

Lester sighed and tossed the reports into the recycling bin. There were electronic copies should he ever have to refer to anything in them at any point, which he very much doubted he would ever have to do. He got up and wandered over to the mirror, straightening his lilac tie. Underneath the mirror was his real aim: the coffee machine. Unfortunately it was empty. He hit the handle lazily, spinning the pot round, and wandered off to find someone to refill it. He could easily do it himself, but the more dependant on his staff he appeared, the better. Besides: that was what he was paying them for, after all.

His procrastinative meanderings took him past the atrium, where just ten minutes earlier he has sought to relieve his boredom by taking an interest in the work of his computer experts. Unfortunately, when faced with Nigel, this had had the opposite effect. He wandered out along one of the corridors, noting the absence of both Cutter and Jenny as he passed their respective offices. Eventually, he found a secretary, in a small staff room, on her lunch break, and informed her of his lack of caffeinated beverage and the way in which it was to be rectified as soon as her break was over.

Having nothing better to do, Lester continued to inspect his domain. He found that a surprising number of people had found the need to take a lunch break at the same time, namely: lunch time. This suggested that perhaps he should consider eating something himself. When he reached the locker room and gingerly removed the foil-wrapped package his wife had lovingly prepared for him that morning, he became aware of the tinny sound of music coming from the other end of the room. He inspected the contents of his lunch and threw the package in a nearby bin. Turning his head towards the sound, he followed it to his source.

The noise was music from headphones. Their wearer was busily practising some martial arts manoeuvres. It was Becker. Lester rolled his eyes, stuck out a hand and put Becker in an arm-lock.

"What was that for?" Becker asked, rubbing his arm as Lester let him go, his earphones dangling around his neck.

"Oh, honestly, you're as bad as Connor!" Lester replied dryly, heading over to a bench at the side of the practise mats and sitting down. "I'd have thought you of all people would have more sense than to let your guard down like that."

"We're in the ARC, James: it's not somewhere I'm expecting to be attacked."

"And yet we were, less than four months ago!"

"Ah."

"Yes, I never did give you all the details of that, did I," Lester mused. Perhaps we should remedy that now."

XXXX

"So why have you stolen me away to this..." Jenny pulled a face as if looking for the right words, "rather quaint little restaurant," she finished.

"It opened about six months ago," Nick replied. "I've been waiting for an excuse to try it out since."

"Why thank you, that's so flattering!"

"Anyway, it's out of Lester's way, and that's what matters."

"Wow you're really getting the hang of that flattery thing."

"And you looked like you needed to get out of his way."

Jenny paused.

"Okay, point taken," she said.

"Anyway," Nick continued, "I was starving and I didn't think Burger King was quite your style."

Jenny rolled her eyes and decided that she was fighting a losing battle. It was just lunch. Despite her hints, that was all it was going to be. She had better get used to it.

XXXX

"Well, it's not the work," Connor said, resting his head against the atrium wall as he and Abby sat watching the others continue working. "And it's hardly likely to be the secretaries in this place. The ones that aren't male are old enough to be my mum. That just leaves..."

Connor's head snapped forwards and he stared across the atrium. He laughed.

"Peta! You're jealous of Peta!"

"She has a crush on you!" Abby stated defensively.

"She obviously has great taste then," Connor grinned, earning himself another elbow in the ribs.

"Well, seriously, I don't know what you're worried about," Connor shrugged. "I mean, she's nice and all that, and she really knows her stuff when it comes to computers, and... What are glaring at me like that for?"

"I'm waiting for the 'but'!" Abby growled.

"_But_, she's not my type."

Abby laughed.

"Not your type? Connor, you don't have a type!"

"Yes I do!"

"Go on then," Abby sat back with folded arms. "What's your 'type'?"

Connor suddenly realised he'd let himself get backed into a corner. His brow wrinkled as he searched for a way out. He tried the only one he could think of.

"Um... You?"

Abby's eyes narrowed. She opened her mouth to say something and was immediately cut off by the blare of the anomaly detector. All eyes turned to the detector in the centre of the room, then immediately switched to the old detector in its new, temporary, position at the far wall.

"Oh no," Connor groaned.

"What?" Abby asked.

"Nigel's in the driving seat!"

They got up and headed over to where a crowd was forming around the detector and the bespectacled youth at the controls.

"You sure you know what you're doing this time Nigel," Peta whispered into Nigel's oversized ear.

"Just an elementary error last time. It'll be fine," Nigel reassured her enthusiastically as he fine tuned the triangulation instrumentation.

Connor and Abby joined the crowd just as Nigel zoomed in on the Cornish peninsula. The satellite map dropped down further revealing the patchwork of fields and built up areas between Wadebridge and Bodmin. In the midst of the grey-green polygons there were a series of dark green gashes in the landscape. Nigel was heading straight for one.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he announced triumphantly, "we have our next anomaly. Nearest village is Burlawn, due north of the suspected site."

"Well," said Abby, glancing around the crowd, "I suppose somebody had better find Lester and the others."

"That's a turn up for the books," Connor replied. "Usually it's them trying to find us!"


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

"Are we nearly there yet?"

"Nearly, just another ten miles to Bodmin."

"I thought the anomaly was at Burlawn?"

"It is: that's on the other side of Bodmin."

Cutter slumped back and let Becker continue driving. They had left Lester back at the ARC, co-ordinating things, and the five of them were now cramped into a Land Rover with the entire boot taken up by a lumpy tarpaulin. Behind them, several other cars followed, each carrying a supply of military personnel. On either side of Cutter, Connor and Jenny each found something interesting and technical to do with various bits of newfangled gadgetry. In the seat next to Becker, Abby sat with a map unfolded on her lap and a sat-nav in her hand.

Cutter examined the ceiling. He made a close study of the light switch above his head. He considered the automatic air conditioning system blowing cold air onto the back of his feet. He debated the merits of the automatic gear box in front of him. He asked himself why he hadn't thought to bring a book.

XXXX

"Well?" Lester snapped, his arms habitually folded in front of him.

"It's still installing the program," Nigel replied, never taking his eyes off the screen. "Once it's done that, we just need to reboot the system."

"And how long do you expect that to take?"

"This system, Sir James, is a work of art!" Nigel gasped. "One cannot hurry art!"

"Yes, but last time I checked, you were employed as a scientist, so get a move on!"

Lester shook his head and stalked off to the other side of the atrium, where Peta was overseeing the removal of the imploder onto a large trailer.

"Will it work?" Lester asked.

"We've no way of being sure without trying it," Peta replied calmly.

"But you're gut feeling is..." He let the word hang in the air.

"That it's more likely to work the way Connor first described: matching the oscillation of the anomaly pole for pole."

"But if that one goes wrong..."

"We won't be alive long enough to find out."

"How cheering."

XXXX

"Report."

"No change, Ma'am."

"Nothing?"

"No, Ma'am. Not a word."

Helen Cutter sighed inwardly. Obstinacy was a trait she had always hated in others. It was especially annoying in this case. She was beginning to lose her temper. She had to tread carefully here: the slightest miscalculation could mean the end for her little project. It was a project that had taken a lot of time and planning, not to mention sacrifices. But any sacrifices were worth it if she achieved her final goal. She had much to thank Hugh Everett III for.

Helen leant over and flicked on her monitor screen. An image flickered between the two parallel bars supporting an impossibly thin screen, then held steady. She gazed at the recumbent figure slumped in a corner of the cell. A smile tugged at the side of Helen's mouth. It wasn't obstinacy she saw, but hopelessness. Utter, miserable, desperation. She recalled an old adage about drowning men and straws.

"Since you are so obviously incapable," she breathed, her eyes alight with the thrill of the chase, "I shall have to do your job for you."

Sliding her knife silently out of it's sheath, she cut and tore a strip of material from the bottom of her shirt: it would be easy enough to replace the garment. Attacking the rock wall with her knife, she hacked a piece off. The caves were chalk: soft, powdery and perfectly suited to her purpose, both this and her overall goal. She shifted the weight of the rock in her hand and turned its point to the material, pinning it down while she spread it out on the floor of the cave. This had to look authentic. She scratched her message. Clear, concise and urgent, the words stood out from the dark material like stars in a cloudless sky. She rolled up the scrap of cloth, cut a piece of her hair with her knife and tied the small bundle with sharp, deft movements.

"Tell me," said Helen Cutter as she rose to meet the guard's eye, "Who do we have in the cell next to that of," she paused and smiled, "our very special guest?"

XXXX

"Of course, Mrs Trescothyck," Jenny drawled, smiling through gritted teeth. "The government always takes an interest in any large animal sightings. Since the Dangerous Animals Act of 1978, sightings such as these have increased immensely. You'd be amazed how many people were once willing to keep these things as pets!"

"Well, it's nice to hear someone's been taking it seriously all this time," Mrs Trescothyck replied, her double chin wobbling amiably. "But I don't know if _everyone_ down here _wants_ you to find the thing. It's _our_ beast, y'see: what makes us special."

"Well, that's why we'll be relying on your discretion, Mrs Trescothyck. That way it will just be between ourselves and the rest of the world need never know that the Beast of Bodmin has been captured."

"Well, now that _depends _on you catching it, now don't it? It's a slippery customer. It's had _two _of my chickens this mornin' and I've _still _no idea how it gets in! And the strangest paw prints you ever did _see_! My poor Trescothyck, God rest him, he would never have _believed_ it! And him as left me with two good sons and a fine _shotgun_ to look after me!"

"So you haven't seen the 'beast' at all, Mrs Trescothyck?"

"No, my darlin', not me. No, I'm round milkin' the cows when I hears this _noise_, see, and by the time I gets here, it's _gone_! Nothin' left but _feathers _and some fine mess of mud around the chicken coop! Well, I went _straight_ off to get my shotgun, _Bertie_, and to call my _Jim_, that's my eldest boy, and then I comes back 'ere to find I'm not _one_ bird down but _two_!"

"And what did you tell Jim, exactly?"

"_Well_, I hadn't had a good look _round_, you see, so I just _thought _it was one of them sly old _foxes_ again and I told him _that_, but he wasn't going to come round for just a _fox_, so he told me to get _Bertie_ and wait it out by the _coop_. Told me if I saw anything I was to _aim_ the gun _high_ so's I didn't hit any of my _girls_ here and the _noise_ would scare the blighter off."

"Probably best to leave it that way," Jenny smiled indulgently. "We wouldn't want to worry him, would we. Not when you've got all of us here especially! Would you mind awfully if we made a camp in one of your fields? Perhaps round the back of some of your outbuildings? So that we're out of the way of prying eyes from the road?"

"Of course you can, my lovvie, I've got a big barn just over the other side of this field that I don't use at all these days: you can set up your 'camp' in there and have a proper roof over your heads. I'd have you in the house if there was room, but I don't like the idea of all of them men in muddy boots traipsin' up my stairs. There's room for yourself though, and the young lass there."

"That would be marvellous, Mrs Trescothyck!" Jenny cried, letting a smile beam across her face. "I'll let my boys know."

The faces of two of Jenny's 'boys' were less than pleased to hear all of the news.

"You should be out in that barn with us, showing your solidarity to the team!" Cutter teased, knowing full well that no such thing was ever likely.

"Me, walk across a field in these shoes," Jenny replied. "I don't think so. Besides, it would have been terribly rude of me to refuse such kind hospitality."

"You could have at least tried to get _us_ a bed for the night too!" Connor complained. "We're not muddy military guys!"

"No, you're just muddy scientist guys," Abby grinned, "and you still snore!"


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

The scrawled note on the scrap of makeshift parchment meant very little on its own; but to one person, what it signified meant everything. It meant hope. It meant a light in the darkness. It meant they were not alone. Alone in the labyrinthine depths of this cave. Alone in this unrecognisable landscape, this world they had caught a brief glimpse of, purely by accident, on the way to the caves.

XXXX

"It should be just down this hill," Connor waved the anomaly detector in front of him in the direction of the hill.

"You're sure?" Becker queried.

"Absolutely: these things are never wrong."

Becker pulled a face as he looked at the steep decline before him. On the road out from Bodmin, they'd gone past the top of a valley that looked as deep and as steep as this one and he remembered hoping he wouldn't have to try driving out of it. Land Rovers were capable of great things, but he wasn't aching to put that theory to the test at the bottom of a gully with less than perfect roads out of it.

"What's wrong?" Cutter asked.

"It might be better if I take my guys in first, just to make sure there's nothing nasty down there."

"Why can't we all just go in together?" Abby shrugged. "Like we normally do."

"This isn't exactly normal though, not even by your standards," Becker explained. "The gully in front of us is so steep that I can't be sure if I'm going to be able to drive out of it. Climbing out on foot is an option, but it would be slow and, if there's a predator down there, we have to assume it's better equipped to catch us than we are to run away. It's caught two chickens so far. They're not bright, but they're not the slowest of birds either."

"That's all well and good," Cutter interjected, "but you don't know what you're looking for. By the time you've checked out the whole gully and decided it's safe for us to go down there, you'll probably have trampled over any evidence that might tell us what the creature is."

"So what do you suggest?"

"Minimise the risk: you go on foot, and I go with you."

"I'm not sure that's such a good idea."

"I can shoot straight, I'm fitter than you think and I've had more experience dealing with these creatures than any of your men, plus I know what I'm looking for."

Becker sighed. Before they left, Jenny had warned him about Cutter's stubborn side. He had to agree with some of Cutter's arguments, though: the man did have more experience with prehistoric creatures. As for the rest: he'd just have to take that on faith, although he had heard Cutter was handy with a samurai sword.

"Fine," he conceded. "You and me. My men stay here though, in case we need them."

"Agreed," Cutter nodded.

A few moments later, the two men were making their way down the precipitous road. Trees filled their view, cutting off the road at every bend as it zigzagged its way down the slope. Becker was edgy. Cutter watched him out of the corner of his eye. Every noise was scrutinised, even when the source was obvious to Cutter.

Eventually the valley floor came into view. The two men made their way down to a wood and iron bridge that carried the road over a narrow stream. They paused, looking up and down the valley. Cutter checked his handheld detector. He found the bearing where the signal was strongest and looked up. Through the trees he could just about make out some kind of building.

"It's this way," he said, heading off without waiting for Becker's reply.

Becker followed on silently, watching the undergrowth on either side. The dirt track Cutter had followed from the bridge eventually became more defined and the building in the trees came into view. It was a house, but it had obviously been abandoned for quite some time. There was evidence of flood damage around the foundations of the cottage and the shed had almost completely fallen down.

Cutter glanced over his shoulder at Becker. The younger man was scanning the area.

"Let's find a way in," Cutter murmured, following the path in the hopes that it led to a door.

After walking round the side of the house, his hopes were justified and a rotting wooden door hung half-open before him. Cutter checked the detector again and pushed the door fully open. The hallway lay before him, wallpaper peeling off the walls, curtains hanging limply across their fixtures and a strong smell of damp assailing his nostrils. He stepped inside the doorway, felt Becker follow him, and waited for his eyes to become accustomed to the dark. When he could see more clearly, he picked out the two doors in one wall of the hallway, and another at the far end. Stairs rose up before him. He ignored them and turned to the first door.

Cutter waited until Becker had positioned himself on the other side of the door frame before he pressed the handle and let the door swing open. The room was empty, cold and silent. Dead. Where once a life had inhabited this space, now there was no trace of vivacity. Cutter examined the room without moving. There was no anomaly here. He moved on to the next room.

As soon as he opened the door, he knew something was different. He couldn't place it: it might have been a taste in the air or a faint sound on the very edge of hearing, but it was there. At first he saw nothing, but as he scanned the room, he became aware of a faint outline of a door on the far side of the room. If the outline wasn't exactly light, it was certainly less dark than the rest of the room.

"Through there," he whispered to Becker.

Slowly, the two men advanced upon the door. They paused when they reached it, listening carefully for any tell tale sounds that might give a clue to what lay beyond. Hearing nothing, Becker eased open the door. As soon as he did so, flickering white light met their eyes and suddenly, it was before them. Becker gasped. Cutter smiled.

Suddenly a crash sounded from outside the house. Becker spun round, his eyes darting around the room. Cutter shut the door to the anomaly firmly.

"Come on," Becker said, making his way back across the floor.

"It's probably just Connor and Abby not doing as they're told yet again," Cutter whispered as he reached Becker's side. His tone was not convincing.

Side by side the two men made their way out of the building the same way they had entered it. Following a signal from Becker, Cutter turned in the opposite direction from the soldier and started making a counter-clockwise circuit of the house. He had barely turned the next corner when he heard the noise again. It wasn't so loud this time, but it was definitely coming from somewhere in front of him. There was a trellis sticking out from the side of the house, blocking his view. He edged up to it. The noise came again. It was a metallic rattling. Cutter frowned. He eased his pistol out of its holster and stepped up to the edge of the trellis. Peering round the thin wooden division, he saw the source of the noise. In front of him now were two old galvanised rubbish bins. He watched one rock from side to side as the metallic noise now made itself familiar in his mind.

Becker joined him at that moment, just in time to see Cutter put his gun back in its usual place.

"What is it?" Becker asked.

"Whatever it is, it's got itself stuck in that bin," Cutter replied, pointing at one of the bins which periodically rocked. The lid was on upside down. Cutter tried to pull it up, but it seemed stuck fast by its unorthodox position.

The bin shook again, this time more violently, and Becker involuntarily took a step back. Whatever was inside seemed to have worked out that it might be able to tip its prison. Another shake rocked the bin further and this time it was Cutter who stepped out of the way as it slowly tipped onto its side.

And then, the lid fell off.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

Cutter dived on the creature as it scurried out of the overturned bin. He let out a yell as small, sharp teeth sunk into his hand. Soon he was on his feet with the creature firmly under one arm and his free hand even more firmly around its mouth. Four green legs, a neck and a tail flailed in his grasp.

"Don't suppose you've got any sturdy elastic bands in that kit of yours?" Cutter asked Becker once he had got his breath back. "I'd settle for some decent string, or even sellotape!"

Ten minutes later, with the creature's mouth secured by two strips of velcro backed binding from Becker's pack and the rest of it encased in a large sack, Becker and Cutter stood up.

"It's quite strong for a small animal," Becker gasped, nursing a portion of his side that had taken a direct hit from the tail.

"Definitely a carnivore, judging by the teeth," Cutter tied a handkerchief around his bleeding hand. Becker nodded.

"So what now? Do we just take it round to the anomaly and release it like we're on some nature documentary?"

"No," Cutter sighed, looking up at the tree covered slope on the other side of the stream. "No, now we take it back to the camp, where there should by now be some sort of makeshift lab set up, and we work out a few things."

"Such as?"

"Such as is it our chicken killer, is it alone and how much bloody bacteria did it just punch into my hand!"

XXXX

"D'you think they're alright?" Abby mused, leaning her head on Connor's shoulder to look at the detector in his hand. "They've been gone a long time."

"Yeah," said Connor, only half listening, "They'd have radioed if they needed us."

"Hmm."

Abby looked at the notepad resting on Connor's knee and the scribbles he was writing on it.

"Whatcha doin'?"

"Hmm?" Connor looked from the detector to the pad. "Oh, just some ideas for improvements."

"To the hand-helds?"

"Yeah."

"Connor?"

"Yeah?"

"What's an 'atre'?"

"Hmm? Oh. A.T.R.E.: Anomaly Time Remaining Estimate."

"You can work out how long they're going to last?"

"Not yet, but when we can, it would be good to have it on the hand-helds."

"Why can't you just put everything on the hand-helds?"

Connor sighed and took on an attitude of the patient lecturer explaining a problem to a lazy student for the thousandth time.

"Abby, you can't just put anything on them. They're sensitive pieces of kit! Plus we want to streamline them, not make them bigger. The smaller they can be, the easier they are to carry. But we still want certain things on them, like the direction of anomaly and how far off it is. You never know: we might get stuck on the other side of those one day, like Cutter and Stephen did, then you'll be glad of having one!"

"Better add durability to the list then: they broke theirs."

"A giant scorpion landed on it!" Connor protested. "Well, sort of. Nearly."

"It still broke."

"It stood up to the sandstorm! They'd have been fine if that cleaner guy hadn't shown up."

"Speaking of cleaners," Abby paused and studied the side of Connor's face, his expression had just darkened. "You never did tell me what happened back in Seahouses."

"Yes I did, didn't I?" Connor frowned and looked back down at his notes.

"No," Abby replied, shaking her head slightly. "You told me about getting out of the way of the water and all that, but not what happened before. Becker found him, you know. I know he was there."

"Well, I told Cutter and the rest, I think."

"I wasn't there."

"Not much to tell really."

"Then why don't you want to talk about it?"

"I don't, I mean... I do... I mean..." Connor gave up with a sigh.

"Just talk me through it." Abby said, reaching through from the back seat to wrap her arms around Connor's shoulders. "That was the worst night of my life. I thought you were dead. I just want to know what happened."

"Wasn't exactly all rosy for me either," A grin flitted across Connor's face.

"So tell me about it."

Connor pushed the detector and notepad up onto the dashboard in front of him. He sighed and leaned back. Reliving the moment when he had a gun pointed straight at him, and had effectively just told the man holding it to shoot, was not his favourite pastime. He frowned again, closed his eyes and leaned back in the car seat, feeling Abby's arms around him and her head on his shoulder. He wasn't looking forward to this, but at least it was just the two of them.

Not a detail was missed, not a word mis-remembered. The episode had been etched into Connor's memory like acid into glass. It was clear and permanent. He knew his hands were shaking when he reached the part of the tale Abby already knew, but all the while he could feel her presence there, comforting him: her arms holding him safe, her voice softly telling him that everything was fine now. But that was just it: was it fine now?

"He's dead. He can't hurt you any more," Abby reassured him.

"He was dead when Cutter and Stephen left him to the scorpions in the Silurian," Connor countered. "There's something going on. Something we don't know about, but something big. Helen's probably behind it. Leek wouldn't have the know-how even if he was still alive."

"What sort of thing?"

"I don't know," Connor shrugged, "But nobody can die twice. Lester thinks Nigel's got the right idea: one man taken from multiple timelines. That means there could be more of him."

"But once you take him out of the timeline, won't that stop him being in it in the future."

"You'd have to work backwards in time to make a collection like that, yes."

"But surely you'd have to be able to control the anomalies too."

"Probably, but with Helen, you can't rule that out. There is another possibility though."

"What?"

"Ever heard of the 'Many Worlds Interpretation'?"

"No," Abby shook her head, looking confused.

"It was a quantum physics guy, Hugh Everett, who came up with it. It's supposed to explain some of the weird stuff in quantum physics."

"Isn't that the one where if they don't know what's causing something they just make it up?"

"That's usually particle physics, but some people apply it to this too."

"So what was his big idea then?"

"He suggested that, instead of one universe, there's like this multiple layered multiverse thing. One for each possible change in the universe's history."

"Like alternate realities?"

"Yeah."

"So in another of these... What was it? Multiple Worlds? I could have turned down the job at the Zoo and stuck with uni?"

"Something like that."

"Or you might never have taken that monster sighting to Cutter."

"Yeah," Connor grew quiet again, thinking of all the things that wouldn't have happened in those worlds. He had a feeling that Abby's silence meant her thoughts were moving along similar lines. Eventually she broke that pensive silence.

"D'you think we'd still have met?"

XXXX

"How long have you been here?" he asked, crouching down by the hole he had now scraped in the wall.

"Long enough," Helen replied from the cell next door.

"What do they want?"

"I don't know. They won't tell me."

"They haven't questioned you?"

"Not yet."

"How did you know I was here?"

"I saw you, when they took you out once. You were unconscious."

"Drugged. I think they don't want me getting any ideas about where I am."

"Do you have any idea?"

"Not really. I did see something on the way. I don't think they realised I was awake."

"What did you see?"

"Black ground. Scorched, I think. A few ruins. Houses maybe. I don't know. Nothing else. No people, no animals, no plants. No birds even: it was quiet."

"How did they find you?"

"I don't know. I was at the university. Looking something up in the library one minute, waking up here the next."

"What year was it?"

"What?"

"Just tell me: what year did they take you from?"

"You're scaring me now."

"You don't know about the anomalies?"

"The what?"

"The anomalies. They're holes, gaps, in the space-time continuum. They let people, and animals, move from one time to the another."

"You sound like you know them well."

"I do. And you will too, if they put you back where they took you from. Maybe even if they don't. In my time, you are a key part of the team that studies the anomalies."

"And, let me guess, you're part of that team too?"

Helen smiled. Here was her opening: her way to bring him over to her side.

"Yes," she said.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

"It's an oversized cucumber with teeth!" Lester's acerbic tone sounded tinny through the video conferencing system.

"Actually, it's a Nothosaurus," Cutter replied calmly. "But yes: it definitely has teeth."

"Please tell me it's relatively harmless," Lester sighed. "Or is it going to leap up and do an impression of that rabbit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail?"

"Nah, it's harmless," said Connor, adding, after a quick look in Cutter's direction: "well, mostly harmless!"

"So it is our chicken thief?"

"Probably not," Cutter took over the conversation again, glaring at Connor. "It's just a juvenile. Going by the size of the few prints we found, the creature we're looking for is an adult."

"Same species then?"

"Definitely."

"Threat to humans?"

"Only if cornered," Cutter grimaced.

"Where does the anomaly lead to then?"

"We haven't actually been through it yet," said Cutter, rubbing his chin, "but these guys are found in the Triassic and feed on fish, so we're probably looking at some sort of Triassic shoreline on the other side of there."

Behind Cutter, Abby shivered and Connor wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

"Why the delay?" Lester's eyes flicked from Cutter to Becker.

"Logistics," Becker replied. "The anomaly is in an abandoned house at the bottom of a deep gully. We have a team stationed down there just now, but we're gradually moving supplies and equipment down by hand. It's too steep to trust the vehicles to get out again if we take them down there. We'll set up a secondary camp in the house and garden and take a team through tomorrow."

"How was the Triassic fixed for large, people-eating predators?"

"Oh, one or two, if memory serves," Cutter replied trying his hand at Lester's usual brand of sarcasm.

"Good, good. I'll send Ms Jones down with her new toy then."

"What? No!" Cutter cried out, suddenly realising Lester was taking him seriously. "Lester, we've no idea what could be on the other side of that anomaly! The Triassic held some of the largest predators in the Earth's history! If that thing goes wrong..."

"Well, we'd better hope it doesn't then, hadn't we," Lester replied dryly. "Jones left two hours ago and I'm not calling her back now."

The screen went black as Lester cut off the connection, leaving Cutter and his team standing speechless and shell-shocked.

"Connor?" Cutter's voice cut through the silence like a light sabre through Luke Skywalker's wrist.

"Yeah?" Connor answered tentatively. Unnerved by the way the professor was still staring at the blank screen where Lester had disappeared.

"What are the chances of that thing working?"

"The way Lester wants us to try it first: probably not much."

"So what will happen?"

" Best case scenario: no effect at all."

"Worst case?"

"We open a permanent door to the Triassic."

"Can you make sure that doesn't happen?"

Connor pulled a face and looked at his feet. Cutter still hadn't turned to face him.

"No," he finally admitted.

XXXX

Helen Cutter stood on the brow of the hill, surveying the land below her. Black, dead earth spread out in front of her as far as she could see. With no trees and few buildings still standing, that view went on a long way. If she turned round, she would see a different landscape, but only because the land finished and gave way to water. Ironically, the only building she could see clearly was the ancient Dover castle. Its thick, solid walls had stood the test of time better than modern buildings. Helen laughed inwardly and berated herself for falling back into her old images of the world, where her time was modern and this was the future. She was here. This was modern. The era she had been born in, had loved and married Nick Cutter in, was ancient history now.

She sighed and leant her head back, feeling the breeze on her face and enjoying the silence. There was always noise in the caves. The people, the animals, the machinery that kept them all alive. All of it resounded in her brain. It made it difficult to think sometimes. Those were the times when she would seek the solace of the dead world above the noise. The world she had left behind, temporarily at least.

"Time to go, milady," said a voice behind her. She looked round to see one of the cave-born guards, Cai.

"Just a little while longer, Cai," she pleaded, pouting. "You know how I miss the sky."

"You know the risks, milady. You better than anyone."

He was right: she did know the risks. Better than anyone. She also understood the causes, better than anyone. She was one of them. For now, anyway.

"Oh very well," Helen Cutter sighed, smiling. "Let's go back inside."

XXXX

Nick Cutter woke early and immediately wished he hadn't. He groaned and rubbed the sleep from his eyes, wondering where the incessant droning noise that had woken him was coming from. He sat up and looked around, then remembered where he was and groaned again. On a camp bed two feet away, looking far more comfortable than the contraption he was lying on would allow any normal person to be, Connor slept soundly. Unfortunately, that meant everyone else in the vicinity was awake.

Cutter sighed and dragged himself out of bed. He wouldn't sleep now. At least he had got some sleep while Connor had been up half the night trying to find a way to avoid knocking a permanent hole in the wall between the modern era and the Triassic.

Pouring himself a cup of coffee from the pot another of the disturbed sleepers had already made, Cutter considered the possibility that it might actually be a reasonable time of the morning and looked round for a clock. It was five in the morning. He groaned again, grabbed a chair and his jacket and headed outside.

The cold, crisp air stung Cutter's eyes as he walked outside. He could feel it chill his nose as he breathed it in. The sun wasn't up yet, but at this time of year it wouldn't be long. He made his way round the side of the barn and set the chair down on the east side with it's back to the wall. The tops of the trees might spoil his view a bit, but he was high enough on the hillside to get a good view of the sunrise when it eventually made its appearance.

He set his coffee down on the arm of the chair and put his jacket on. The chair was comfortable enough, he found, settling himself and sipping his coffee. He would watch the sun rise and think things through for a while.

When Becker woke him later, his coffee was cold and the sun had been up for three hours.

XXXX

"I still don't see why you should get to go and not me," said Abby, her hands on her hips.

"I'm a palaeontologist, now, Abby: this is my," Connor waved his hands vaguely, then gave up, frowning. "Thing," he finished.

"I've been part of this team just as long as you have!"

"It's not about that!"

"Then what is it about?"

"I don't know!" Connor ducked his head and tried to sidle away from Abby. "It was Cutter's idea!"

Connor relaxed slightly when he saw Abby turn on her heel and march off. Then he saw where she was going and hurried after her.

"I want to go with Connor," Abby told Cutter. Cutter looked mildly surprised, then shrugged.

"Yeah, sure," he said. "He could probably do with someone sensible along."

"Hey!" Connor objected.

"Look, Becker just doesn't want everybody going through at once. If the anomaly closes and we're all on the other side, he'll be in big trouble with Lester."

"So why is Connor going? Not you?"

"I've been first through a few of them now. I'll be going through myself later with the second team, but I just thought Connor might like the chance to be first for a change."

"Oh," Abby looked slightly mollified. "Right."

"Away and get a pack sorted out," said Cutter, seeing Abby unsure how to react. "Becker's your man for that."

He watched her disappear in the direction of Becker, aware that very shortly there would be a blazing row because Becker did not want more than one of the team through an anomaly at any time and Abby would not risk losing Connor again. Of course there would be a slightly different style of argument five minutes later when Becker would suggest that Abby go through and Connor stay, but then he would eventually relent and give in to the combined force of their demands. Cutter was sure Becker subscribed to the James Lester school of thought when it came to scientists.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

The beach was rocky. So rocky that, for a moment, Abby expected to see a Mer appear from behind a boulder or out of the ocean.

"Where are we?" Abby murmured in Connor's ear, unwilling to let the military team with them see her lack of knowledge.

"Can't tell, really," Connor whispered back. "Somewhere in the Triassic, definitely, unless that nothosaurus has managed to find its way through two anomalies. If it's the Triassic, then we're probably on Pangaea, it was all one continent then, and you are now looking out at the Panthalassic ocean: the largest ocean ever."

Abby looked out at the massive expanse of water, wondering what mysterious species it held. Perhaps this was even the home of the Mirror fish they had encountered up in Seahouses. Perhaps not.

Her reverie was interrupted by a hissing noise coming from a group of rocks behind them that blocked their view of the rest of the beach. She looked up at Connor and found him looking over at the rocks too. He glanced down at her, then led their small team over in the direction of the noise. The rocks were quite high, but the incline was shallow and easy enough to climb. When the group reached the top, they stopped to catch their breath. The scene before them was enough to take it away completely.

The other side of the rock wall sloped down as lazily as it had up. Making its way hastily down was another nothosaurus. It had climbed the rocks, seen them and hissed a warning to the other members of its species which were, even now, covering the hidden part of beach. Adults and young were turning themselves around in the midst of a crowd all trying to head back to the water at the same time. Activity moved like a wave across the shore as those creatures further away noticed the panic of their group and joined in.

"Just like seals," Connor breathed in awe. "Just like we thought."

XXXX

Helen surveyed the man-made cavern before her. The artificially flat floor was covered with spongy matting, upon which an entire legion of almost identical men trained with each other in hand to hand combat. Their only differences being their individual ages. It was, possibly, the greatest army in this new world and it was entirely at her command.

XXXX

"Is this really home to some of the biggest predators in history?" Abby asked Connor as the last of the nothosaurus disappeared into the ocean.

"Nah, 'course not," Connor replied, stuffing his hands in his pockets. "Cutter was just trying to scare Lester."

"Not sure anything scares Lester," Abby muttered. "Except maybe paperwork!"

"He'd obviously decided we were trying out on this one regardless: he'd already sent the team off by the time we called him."

"They're taking their time."

"It's a delicate piece of kit. You have to look after it, Abby: treat it like a... Like a..." Connor struggled for words again. "Like something really fragile, you know?"

"Just as well I'm not one of those girls who goes in for guys who write poetry."

"Hey, I can do poetry!"

"Yeah, right."

"I can!"

Abby raised an eyebrow sceptically and walked on, catching up with the military aspect of the group. Connor stopped and threw up his hands then shoved them in his pockets and sighed.

"I can do poetry," he mumbled sulkily, kicking at the stones around his feet and following the group.

XXXX

Cutter was scrolling down a computer screen and still nursing his hand when Jenny arrived at the cottage. It wasn't her voice that alerted him to her presence, it was the silence that fell on everyone else. He looked up from the article he'd been reading and his jaw fell open. Realising Jenny was glaring at him, he shut his mouth and got up to greet her.

"Where did you get them?" Nick laughed, surveying Jenny's apparel with obvious amusement.

"Mrs Trescothyck," Jenny growled. "And if this is the response I get when I try to dress for the occasion, I won't bother in future!"

"No, no: I admire the sentiment," Nick held up his hands in mock defence, still grinning. "Just remind me to give you a list of shops to visit when we get back to London so that you can buy your own!"

"Oh great, so now I'm getting fashion advice from the nutty professor!"

Nick tried to suppress another bout of laughter. It wasn't just the mud-caked Wellington boots. It was the all-in-one, bright green, farmer's jump suit that was obviously three or four sizes too wide and at least one size too short! It was better than a short skirt and high heels though, he had to admit.

"No, honestly: you look fine," Nick lied. "It's just a new look for you, that's all."

"Hmmm," Jenny raised her eyebrows.

"To what do we owe the pleasure of your company this fine morning?"

"Jones has arrived with the imploder, or exploder in this case, if Connor's right."

"Where are they now?"

"Bringing it down the hill, carefully. I don't know how we're going to get it back up there again, but..." Jenny shrugged, leaving the rest of the sentence to Nick's imagination.

Nick nodded and glanced at his watch.

"Connor and Abby should be heading back now. I'll take a team through once they're back," Nick looked over at Jenny and smiled. "Would you like to join me?"

XXXX

Moving something quite so large and quite so delicate down a slope quite so steep was proving to be just a little bit difficult, and a big bit tedious. Peta had a large group of soldiers at her disposal, all of whom had experience of moving heavy guns into awkward places, but she herself was bored. She was a military scientist, yes, but that meant that she had spent most of her time in a lab or, occasionally, field base, researching new ways to spy on people with out their knowledge. She wasn't used to the heavy lifting and slow movement involved in setting up such bases. That bored her.

Eventually, after a long journey down the hillside, which had followed on from an even longer crawl from London to Burlawn, they reached the valley bottom. It only took another half hour to move the imploder the couple of hundred feet over the bridge and up to the house. Finally her destination, Peta sighed with relief and walked into the house.

Thirty seconds later, the soldiers remaining outside heard an irate scream.

"What do you mean 'it's in a cupboard'!"

XXXX

Calming Peta down had taken a while, but the lucky return of Connor had cheered her up somewhat. Now she was happily trying to work out how to get around the minor problem of the anomaly being completely enclosed by three solid walls and a door.

"I'm telling you, she's weird!" Abby hissed.

"She is not," Connor whispered back. "She's just... Slightly eccentric."

"She's a geek."

"No, she isn't."

"Yes, she is."

"No, she isn't."

"She is, and I can prove it," Abby whispered triumphantly.

"Go on then: prove it," Connor replied.

Abby smirked and sauntered over to where Peta was standing expounding amiably to an uninterested soldier.

"Peta?" Abby said, interrupting the one-sided conversation and giving the soldier a merciful opportunity for escape.

"Yes?" Peta turned to face Abby, her tone carefully cheerful.

"Connor and I were just having a little debate," Abby paused and glanced round as Connor reached her side, his face worried, "And we were looking for a third opinion. I though you might be able to help."

"O-kay..." Peta's expression betrayed mild confusion.

"Who do you think would win," Abby glanced sideways at Connor and grinned mischievously, wondering if he would recognise his own words, "in a fight between Wolverine and Spiderman?"

"Wolverine, obviously," Peta replied, relaxing a little. "I mean he can regenerate and, let's face it: Spiderman always was too much of a goody-two shoes!"


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

"So this is what the Triassic looks like."

Jenny Lewis stood on the same beach that Connor and Abby had stood on an hour or so previously and surveyed the scene before her. It was hot, but there was a slight breeze coming in from the sea. The air was dry and tasted odd in her mouth. The rocks were hard and sharp beneath her feet. They were hot too. She was beginning to see Cutter's point about the wellies.

"Yep," Cutter replied, walking over to her. "Welcome to my world. D'you like it?"

Jenny glanced sideways at him, aware of the group of soldiers behind them, waiting for orders.

"It'll do for now," she said. "Now what about that pack of dinosaurs Connor was talking about."

"If you mean the nothosauravi," Cutter smiled, "then they're over there." He pointed at the mound of rocks. "But they're not dinosaurs. In fact, their name means 'false-lizard'."

Cutter turned and led them over to the rocks, signalling to the soldiers to move slowly and quietly as they began to climb the rocks. They reached the top of the climb almost lying on the rocks themselves, but their caution was well rewarded.

Spread out along the beach, looking just like a colony of seals, if somewhat greener and toothier, were the nothosauravi. Jenny watched Nick's face light up as he scanned the massive crowd. As yet, they had not been spotted. On the other side of Jenny, a soldier held a camcorder steady, documenting the behaviour of the creatures.

Hearing a quiet laugh, Jenny looked back to Nick and saw him watching something with interest and amusement. She followed his gaze. Two large animals were rearing up on their tail and hind-legs, their forelimbs locked against each other as they wrestled and tried to deliver a painful bite to their opponent.

"What are they doing?" Jenny whispered. "Why are they fighting like that?"

"Animals fight over resources," Nick replied, never taking his eyes off the two wrestlers. "Maybe these two are having a disagreement over who's patch of beach that is, or maybe they're arguing over females."

"Is ours the only species where it's the females who argue over men?" Jenny asked dryly.

"No, it isn't," Nick replied, taking her question seriously. "Quite a few species in our time act like that. In fact there's nothing but convention to suggest that these two are males. They may well be female."

Silence descended once more. Jenny watched the nothosauravi fight and the victor hiss in triumph while the loser limped away. After that, her interest began to wander from the impossible creatures before her, to the enigmatic man at her side. Nick's own attention was still riveted to the creatures, but now Jenny stole a glance at him, turning her head slightly to get a better view. Awe and delight lit his face with an irrepressible joy and Jenny Lewis wondered how many eras she would have to walk through before that addictive smile might be turned towards her.

XXXX

"Are you absolutely clear about this, Cai?" Helen fixed the guard with a gaze that pinned him to the wall.

"Absolutely, milady," Cai replied, adjusting the jacket of the suit he was now wearing.

"And you're men?"

"They have their orders."

Helen relaxed a little. She was worshipped here. If she gave an order, she could be certain it would be carried out, as long as it did not seem directly against the survival of the cave-dwellers, or herself. So far, this had been the case. Now, she had to give Cai an order he would be less happy to follow.

"Hit me," she said, walking over to him and pointing to her cheek. "Right about here."

"Milady..."

"Well, I can't exactly do it myself," Helen fixed Cai with an earnest stare and stepped close to him. "If we are to change the history of our planet, this operation must go smoothly, and my part in it must look real. You know what is at stake if we fail."

Cai flinched and nodded. Helen took a few steps back to give the guard room to move. She watched him tighten his fist, then closed her eyes. Her instincts were now so strong that, if she saw the punch coming, she might automatically dodge it and ruin Cai's confidence in her.

She needed that confidence.

That confidence would help her to change the world.

XXXX

Cutter made his way down the slope, carefully avoiding the looser rocks. Jenny and two soldiers followed. The other two remained, with the camcorder, in their position atop the mound. They had been told to follow Cutter's orders and he had ordered them to stay, so they did.

"Right," Cutter said, once he was far enough away from the rocks to raise his voice to normal levels. He turned to the two soldiers. "You two. I want you to follow this coastline in the opposite direction: let's see how abandoned this beach really is. We've got one hour left, so no more than twenty five minutes then turn back."

"Captain Becker said that we shouldn't leave you on your own, sir," one of the soldiers responded.

"I won't be on my own," Cutter replied. "Ms Lewis will be with me."

The two soldiers looked at each other, still unsure, then turned and headed off down the beach. Once they were a few meters away, Nick turned to Jenny.

"Care to take a look inland?"

Jenny's eyes narrowed as they flitted from Nick to the soldiers and back again.

"Okay," she said. "What are you up to?"

"Why do I have to be up to anything?" Nick shrugged, walking backwards and smiling. Jenny followed. He waited for her to catch up, then turned around and led the way up to the top of the beach.

XXXX

Mrs Trescothyck opened the door and eyed the large man on her doorstep suspiciously.

"Good afternoon, madam," the cleaner said smiling. "I believe you have some of my colleagues staying on your land. Sir James sent my men and I down as reinforcements. I wonder if you could direct me to them."

Mrs Trescothyck smiled up at the polite young man. He reminded her slightly of her Jim. She gladly pointed out the barn in which the rest of the nice young man's colleagues were staying and told them that he could find them all, right now, down at the old Tremayne house in the valley there. She smiled as the nice young man thanked her politely and turned back to his army truck. Closing the door, Mrs Trescothyck didn't notice, as the truck rolled away, that all the soldiers in the back of it were identical to the one she had just addressed.

XXXX

The climb to the top of the beach was significantly steeper and higher than the pile of rocks that hid the nothosaurian haul-out spot. When they reached the top, Jenny had to stop and catch her breath. She was definitely regretting the wellies now: they were awkward, ill-fitting and made her feet too warm. She straightened up to take in the view. In front of them a dry arid landscape sloped gently down towards a broad line of green.

"I didn't think I was so unfit!" Jenny gasped, still struggling for breath.

"It's the air here," Nick gasped, also out of breath. "There's a bit less oxygen and a lot more carbon dioxide. That'll be changing soon though, by the look of things."

"What do you mean?"

"That green down there: it's not grasses or algae or something small, it's cycads, or maybe even trees."

"So?"

"So, as they grow, they take in the carbon dioxide from the air and they trap it in their cells. At the same time, they release oxygen, slowly changing the composition of gasses in the world's atmosphere."

"Oh," Jenny began to regain control of her breathing. "So where to now?"

"Those plants aren't too far away," replied Nick, smiling again, "Why don't we go take a look?"

The plants weren't far away, just five minutes walk, and they turned out to be cycads. The palm-like plants towered over Jenny and Nick, shading them from the hot Triassic sun in a green-tinted light. As they moved deeper into the forest, the sound of running water became discernible. Suddenly, Jenny caught a glimpse of something bright.

"Look!"

Nick followed Jenny's gaze and saw a bright red cone protruding from the top of one of the cycads.

"Isn't it beautiful," Jenny murmured.

Nick let his gaze fall from the brightly coloured cone to Jenny's face. It was occasions like these, when she had dropped her guard entirely, that she most reminded him of Claudia. Yet today, for the first time, when he saw her entranced by the beauty of the natural world, she was simply Jenny. No longer the ghost of a woman he used to know, but the very real, living embodiment of a woman he felt, perhaps, he could have a future with.

He reached out and brushed a strand of hair back from her face. His touch dragged Jenny's attention away from the cycad and she turned to face him, finding him closer than he had been before.

"Nick," she murmured.

He cut her off, placing a finger gently over her lips. She met his gaze, hardly daring to breathe. His hand slid from her face to her neck and she felt his lips meet hers. The kiss was soft and gentle, almost as if he was unsure how she would respond. She let her arms slide up his chest and around his neck. Running her hands through his hair, she felt his arms wrap around her and pull her closer. There was no going back now.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

It had taken most of the day to carefully remove the walls around the cupboard. Occasionally, someone would have to nip through and pick up the odd piece of masonry that had fallen awkwardly and landed in the Triassic. They could have done it quicker, but that would have risked a collapse, as the cupboard was in a supporting wall, which would have to be supported elsewhere now.

Pillars had been erected. The house itself was now home office property, along with the land around it, which included most of the valley. The imploder had been moved into place and now surrounded the anomaly. Computers had been set up at a safe distance, should anything untoward happen to the remaining structure of the house. The nothosaurus had been returned, minus samples of its blood and saliva. Everyone stood back and watched.

Connor sat at the computer screen and keyed in the last of the details. He stood up and looked round for Cutter. At Cutter's signal, he pressed the return key and the screen blinked. Silence fell as the whole company waited in anticipation.

For a few seconds, nothing seemed to happened. Then the two gigantic metal hoops began to spin, slowly at first but getting gradually faster. When the rings were no longer discernible in the blur of movement, Connor clicked another button on the computer screen and stepped back. A loud hum filled the air, increasing in volume and pitch until every person watching was bent double with their hands clamped over their ears.

Suddenly, without any warning, the noise stopped, leaving a void-like silence in its wake. The company straightened tentatively. Every person looked around as if checking that the world still held firm around them. Gradually, people began looking at the anomaly.

It was still there. It wasn't unchanged: there had been an effect. The anomaly was now larger by about half its size again. The remnants of the cupboard had vanished into the glittering mass and the edge of the ceiling was starting to shimmer. The imploder was gone.

Connor looked round and met Cutter's gaze. He shrugged. Even with the increase in size, the anomaly was not big enough to swallow the imploder. It should have sat just on the cusp of the sparkle. Becker signalled to one of his men. The soldier ran through the anomaly. A few seconds later, he returned, shaking his head at Becker.

All eyes followed the small group as they formed a huddle away from the main military crowd. Becker, Cutter, Connor, Abby, Jenny and Peta. They looked to each other for answers, but knew there were none to be found. Not yet. The result was unexpected, but still unanalysed. More information would be needed before any conclusions could be drawn and any ideas formed or reformed. Abby was the first to laugh.

"Lester's going to be really annoyed," she grinned. "Just think of all that paperwork."

XXXX

"Where did they take you?"

"I don't know," Helen made an effort to instil a tremble into her voice. She knew he'd watched her return, knew he'd gaped at her dishevelled state and the blood dripping down her cheek from the gash in the centre of the already swelling bruise. She'd heard him rail and shout at her guards as they shoved her roughly into the adjoining cell and locked the grill. She'd waited patiently as he scraped away the pile of chalk chips and dust that hid the gap in their communicating wall. "Another part of the caves, maybe. It was dark. I was unconscious for a lot of it. It smelt the same: stale, dank."

"What did they want?"

"I don't know. They just kept asking about you. What would make you talk. I said I didn't know."

"What did they do?"

"Sometimes nothing. They wouldn't let me drink or eat. It was hot. I was thirsty. They would ask me their questions, then they'd just vanish into the darkness, like ghosts in a nightmare."

"And other times?"

"There was a man. A tall man. The one in the suit who followed them down here when they brought me back. When I kept telling him I didn't know what he was talking about, he hit me." Helen gasped back a sob, making sure he heard her. "I think I passed out. The next thing I knew I was being dragged back here."

"Maybe they believed you and just wanted to knock you out to bring you back here," he said, searching for the silver lining in this chaotic cloud. "If they believe that, they might let you go."

"Maybe," Helen let her crocodile tears subside under his soothing words. "What about you though?"

"Who knows," he replied bravely. "Who cares!"

"But why are you so important to them?" Helen measured her tones carefully. "Why you? There are so many involved with the anomalies. Why you?"

"I don't even know anything about these anomalies," he sighed. "Not yet, anyway. Not according to you."

"You will though. You'll be a part of it. A part of the cover up."

"You sound as if I was one of the bad guys!"

"In my time, you were."

"I thought you were working with the anomaly team too?"

"I was. Then I found out more than I should," Helen sobbed again before adding carefully: "Now I'm here."

She heard him shift his weight on the other side of the wall and smiled. No good man could resist a damsel in distress. It worked every time. Every person had both hero and villain inside them. You just had to know which buttons to push to change them from one to the other.

"We'll get out of here," he said. "Somehow. And then we'll get back to our own times, and we'll fix this."

"I can't go back that far: not to your time. I might meet myself. It'll create a paradox. It could destroy everything," Helen let panic creep into her voice now. "But I can't go back alone. Not now. They know who I am. They want to destroy me."

"It's okay: you won't be alone. I can't create a paradox if I go back to your time. I've disappeared from my time. If I go back later than I disappeared I can't meet myself. Right?"

Helen let out one final sob and muttered an agreement. On her side of the wall, a satisfied smile spread across her features. It would still take time, but now she was getting somewhere. He was on her side now: willing to believe her stories. It didn't matter that he hadn't really disappeared from her timeline, but from another, alternate timeline deep within the multiverse. To all intents and purposes, he was the same man and he could be controlled in the same way. By the time he found out the truth, if he ever found out the truth, he would be too deeply embedded in her lies to see it for what it was.

It wouldn't be comfortable: she would have to spend some considerable time in the chalk cell. At least she would be more comfortable than him: her guards had placed a soft bed, water supply and other essentials in the room while he had been unconscious earlier.

A few more interviews with Cai or one of her army would harden his stubbornness. A few more disappearances where she returned looking badly treated would bind him closer to her. By the time she had engineered their 'escape', he would be wholly hers. In the meantime, though, perhaps a longer disappearance was in order. Something that would really worry him, but something that would give her the chance to collect yet another ace into her sleeve.

XXXX

It took most of the next day to make the structure of the house solid. There was talk of completely rebuilding, but someone suggested that presenting Sir James with a bill for architect's fees, materials, builders and various other extras involved, as well as the replacement cost of the imploder, would not be considered either wise or prudent. It was agreed that any major rebuilding could be done once the anomaly had been fully analysed and once they were sure that it was not going to disappear the next day.

Partly to be near the anomaly, partly to get away from Connor, Cutter had decided to make himself part of the team that would remain in the gully to guard the anomaly. The military guards were taking it in shifts to mount watches against the possibility of any other creatures coming through unseen. Cutter decided that there should be a scientist handy should anything appear in the middle of the night and promptly volunteered himself.

It only took ten minutes for Becker to brief the soldiers on procedures. Ten minutes with a team of military troops lined up in the front garden of the house, with their backs to the anomaly. Well, Cutter and his team were still over there after all. Except they were busy with the computers: they thought the military were watching the anomaly.

Ten minutes. Hardly much time at all, but long enough.

Long enough for something to sneak through unseen.

Or, at least, someone...


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

"Any change?"

The question fell like lead under Cutter's heavy tone. There was no change. He could see that. He was only asking out of the faint hope that there might be some minuscule wavering that his own eyes could not detect. He sighed as Connor shook his head in mute reply.

"What about the imploder?"

Again, the silent shrug and shaken head. Connor's silence was starting to unsettle Cutter. He'd never seen his pupil so apathetic. If there was one thing that could be said for Connor, it was that he wore his heart on his sleeve. Whatever was going on in his head, showed. Cutter had seen him happy, sad, madly enthusiastic, furiously angry and heart-wrenchingly grief-stricken. The entire spectrum of emotions had, at some point, played across his features. Now it was almost as if the bottom had dropped out of his world. The closest he could recall was the ice-cold quiet when Abby had disappeared, but that was the calm after the storm and even that had held a simmering fire of rage and pain. Now, there was just nothing.

"Can you build another one?"

A tired nod. Cutter sat down beside Connor.

"It wasn't your fault, you know."

Connor's eyes turned to look at Cutter as if he were raindrops sliding down a window pane: utterly inconsequential.

"Lester ordered you to try it that way first."

The eyebrows rose and fell as Connor looked away.

"You said yourself it probably wouldn't work," Cutter tried to accentuate the positive. "You were right. You said it might enlarge the anomaly. You were right there too. You said it might make it permanent: so far it's holding."

Cutter watched Connor's eyes close slowly as he listed the points. Then he saw Connor draw in a breath and he fell silent.

"I didn't," said Connor slowly, "say it might swallow up three million pounds worth of kit into oblivion. I think Lester might remember that more than the others."

Cutter's eyebrows rose. There was silence while his mind scanned and re-scanned Connor's words, hoping that he had misheard.

"How much?" Cutter gasped.

XXXX

Helen scanned the house from the shelter of the bushes. They really were so utterly incompetent. A valley full of soldiers and she still managed to walk right past them without them noticing. No wonder the human race was in such a mess in the future. The only problem now would be tearing her beloved husband away from his insignificant flunkies. There was one way, of course: a sign that she knew Nick only associated with her, and nobody else, except perhaps Stephen, would ever have known about.

Waiting motionlessly for an opportune moment, Helen planned out her route. Across the small gap between the bushes and the door, through the tiny hallway and up the stairs. After that, it was just a matter of finding his room and her way out again. The guards disappeared on their circuit of the house. Nick was too busy sitting at a computer just outside the half-demolished living room trying to cheer up his resident genius. Helen put her plan into action.

In under a minute, she was at the top of the stairs. Nobody had heard anything, or seen anything. Everybody went about their business without the slightest idea she was there. She slipped silently into each of the upper rooms in turn until she found the one she was looking for. She removed a pen and paper from one of the pockets at her belt and scribbled a few words on it.

There was a water glass by the bed. It proved a useful paperweight. She left as silently as she had arrived and nobody knew she was there.

XXXX

"Look, you're going to have to make sure he understands," Cutter told Becker forcefully. "He ordered it done that way. If Connor couldn't predict that reaction, then no-one could have. It's not his fault."

"I still don't see why it has to be me, Professor," Becker replied, sighing. "You're the team leader."

"Aye, like Lester would listen to anything I said in this case!"

"All the same..."

"Look, you two obviously go back a long way. I've seen your wee chats that you have: they're not formal briefings. You know him. He'll listen to you, even if it is just long enough for him to see that it's his own stupid fault."

"Sir James may be many things, Professor," Becker's tone became a warning, "but he's not stupid."

"You see," Cutter grinned triumphantly, walking backwards before Becker could reply. "You do know him better than me!"

XXXX

"Maybe we could make a, well, mini version," Nigel suggested.

"What do you mean, Nigel," Connor sighed. "The one we had would only just fit round it now."

"Well, without the hoops and all that. Just the magnets."

Connor and Peta turned and looked at each other with identical expressions of utter confusion. They looked at the spindly young man sat between them.

"What?" Peta asked.

"We get, or we make, lots of little electromagnets and fix them around the anomaly, like spotlights, and we use them instead."

Peta looked back over at Connor. He looked thoughtful.

"It might work," he admitted. "We'd need lots of supports though."

"I'll see what I can find," she said, hurrying off.

XXXX

Cutter made a hasty escape and sought refuge up the stairs. His room was at the near end of the staircase, right above what had turned out to be the kitchen. The rooms along the middle of the landing had been deemed unsafe as they hung above the poorly supported living room of the house.

He closed the door behind him and leaned back against it, letting a deep sigh escape him. He hadn't slept well last night, despite the lack of Connor's snores. Ironically, by the sound of it, Connor hadn't had much opportunity to disturb anyone's sleep last night. He'd been up all night trying to work out where his three million pound new toy had gone.

Three million pounds!

Cutter's head spun. Why in the world did it have to be that expensive. You could buy his house three times for that and still have some considerable small change left over! Even at today's prices!

He walked over to the old wooden bed and flung himself down on it, wincing when he heard a crack and hoping it was himself, not the bed. It was silly and irrational, but with a three million pound deficit hanging over them the last thing he wanted was to add the cost of a new bed. As if that would make much difference! Lester would probably just tell him to put the mattress on the floor and live with it!

He rubbed a hand across his eyes and laughed at his own idiocy. A yawn took over his features. He pushed himself up on one arm and reached for his glass of water. As he took a sip, a piece of white paper floated to the ground, catching his eye. He leaned over to pick it up and squinted at the paper in the poor light.

Suddenly he sat up, swung his legs off the bed and onto the ground, and stared at the piece of paper as if it had been an accusation of murder.

In front of him there were four words scrawled in three lines:

Stone bridge.

Dusk.

Alone.

But what really made him stare was not the cryptic taciturnity of the words, it was the familiar doodle below them. A quick, rough drawing of an animal he associated with just one person. It was a sketch of an ammonite.

XXXX

Jenny Lewis sat at her laptop, not working.

She was supposed to be typing up a press release to cover the ARC's extended stay in the gully, but she couldn't concentrate. If she stared at the page, the words blurred before her. If she looked out of the window, her mind drifted back to the Triassic. If she closed her eyes, she remembered Nick.

She'd spent half the afternoon trying to stop grinning like a schoolgirl.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

The stone bridge was some distance from the wood and metal contraption near the house. It was further up the valley, enclosed on each side by the valley walls and hidden from the house by long overgrown trees and bushes that had, at one time, perhaps been a part of the house's gardens.

Cutter stood on the keystone of the bridge, watching the water flowing on relentlessly beneath him. What did Helen want this time? Stephen was gone. She could remove Cutter no further from his best friend. First, she had destroyed his trust in Stephen, then, with her megalomaniacal zoo, she had removed him from this life altogether. Cutter considered the possibility that she had had something to do with Claudia's disappearance as well. What else did she have up her sleeve? Some new technology from the future? Some gruesome prediction of how he was going to die if he didn't come with her and help her play God?

He kicked at the ancient stone wall along the side of the bridge and heard a quiet, but familiar, laugh.

"Helen?"

Helen stepped out from the trees. Cutter wondered how long she'd been there, watching him like a cat watches a mouse.

"Good to see you Nick," Helen said smoothly. "I missed you."

"Don't bother," Cutter sighed, his patience fraying. His hackles always rose whenever Helen was around these days. "Just say what you've got to say. Let's get this over with."

"Why Nick," Helen pouted, "such harsh words! And we've known each other so long, and so well."

"Hardly. I don't think you know me at all, Helen. And I'm absolutely certain I don't know you. Not now."

"I'm still the same woman you married."

"No, Helen, you're not. The woman I married wouldn't disappear into the past for eight years without a word to anyone who loved her."

Helen tilted her head to one side and smiled.

"What," she said, "makes you so sure that it was eight years?"

Cutter stopped. His mouth hung slightly open, the words he had been forming frozen on his lips. His brow creased. She was right: there was no way he could know how long, in her own personal timeline, Helen had been gone for. Just like the time he and Stephen had become trapped in the Silurian with the girl, Taylor. The second anomaly had brought them out in their own time, but miles from where they had first gone through. Who could say how many minutes or hours had passed between the two opening? What if they had really been in the middle Palaeolithic? What if they had had to pass through a dozen anomalies to get home? It could have taken them months, and yet they could have returned to the same day in which they left. Or the anomaly they found could have taken them home further into the future than it had. A month, a year: who knows? It could have been the same for Helen. Only she knew how long she had spent wandering through time.

"How long was it then?" Cutter asked. Helen grinned again.

"Oh, I don't know," she said. "Someone once wrote that 'time is an illusion'. That's never more apparent than when you're travelling through it."

"I would have thought travelling through time would surely make it seem anything but!"

"Really? Step through one anomaly and it's dusk. Step through another and it's dawn. Yet another and it's midday, or even midnight. The body clock can't keep up. It loses focus and suddenly time has very little meaning any more."

Cutter sighed. This wasn't going as planned.

"Look, what do you want, Helen," he said, trying to bring the conversation back on track.

"Oh, I just dropped by to say hello," Helen smiled. "I didn't think your military escort would be too pleased to see me." She laughed again before continuing: "but then again: I don't think they're entirely capable of that. Not if I don't want to be seen."

Helen turned as if to go, then paused and looked back.

"Oh there was one thing I came back for," she said, as if in afterthought, "but don't worry: my men will have picked it up by now, and cleared our path. Just an interesting little piece for my collection."

Before Cutter could reply, Helen had disappeared. He shook his head. Conversations with Helen were cryptic at best. This had been utterly surreal. A thought struck him and he swore under his breath then broke off at a run for the anomaly house.

XXXX

Sir James Lester sat at his video-linked monitor in his conference room. He had tried the base and the anomaly house and neither had answered. He had also tried Becker's mobile, Jenny's mobile, Cutter's mobile and was now in the process of trying Abby's. He reasoned that something had gone wrong. What, however, was currently beyond his speculative ability, as it was useless to speculate without any data.

There was no answer from Abby's mobile. He tried Connor's. No answer. He gradually worked his way through the list of numbers before concluding that whatever had gone wrong had affected everyone in the team. He couldn't even raise an answer on that blessed farmwife's land line!

Well, there were no major holes in Cornwall, that much he was sure he would already know about from other sources if it were the case. They wouldn't be stupid enough to all go through an anomaly. It was highly unlikely that a predator would have killed them all quite so quickly. That left a few possibilities, although Sir James Lester was not in the habit of ignoring the possibility that he had not considered every possible outcome.

Allowing, therefore, for ideas he had not yet thought of, Lester decided that either the imploder had sucked them all into another time zone or there was a major incident of the Mrs Cutter variety on the cards. He sighed. If you wanted a job doing and all that...

Besides: he hadn't risked his life dragging Becker out of a Middle Eastern melee to lose him to some mad old hag with a death wish on behalf of the whole human race.

XXXX

When Cutter arrived at the house, he was greeted by an eerie silence. Worse: when he looked carefully through the gathering gloom, he could make out the listless forms of the two guards slumped against the wall.

He barged into the house. More prostrate figures lay on the living room floor. He bent down and checked the pulse of the nearest one.

"They're still alive."

Cutter looked round. It was Helen.

"What have you done?"

"Just a handy little gadget I picked up in the future. It works a bit like a silent bomb. Knocks out everyone within a certain radius. I set one just before I was due to meet you. It went off while we were talking."

Helen smiled as realisation dawned on Cutter's face. Her face became serious again as two pairs of large arms grabbed Cutter and held him back.

"I believe you've met Bob," Helen smiled. "Perhaps not in all his incarnations, but in these two anyway."

Cutter looked up to see two identical cleaners pinioning his arms to his sides. He couldn't be sure, but he thought that maybe one was the man he had come face to face with in the hull of a boat. He remembered how that meeting went and decided not to try for a reprise.

"Where are the others?" Cutter asked.

"If you mean your eclectic little team, then they're fine. Unconscious, but fine. At least they will be when they wake up."

"Then why are you still here?"

"Oh, didn't I say? I had my men here pick up a special little prize for my collection. I was just stopping off to collect it when you arrived."

Helen nodded to another of the Cleaners, who had been standing behind Cutter, and he stepped forward with a limp bundle in his arms. A portion of the blanket the bundle was wrapped in fell back and Cutter's eyes widened in fury. It was Jenny.

No.

Not again.

Cutter struggled against his captors as Helen and her minions disappeared through the anomaly.

They're going to have to let me go, he thought. If these two are going back, they've got to let me go or take me with them.

Unfortunately, Helen had considered this also and Cutter let out a short gasp as he felt the needle forcing the sedative into his bloodstream. The effect was quick, but not instantaneous. As he fell to the ground, his unwanted supports having released him, he remained conscious long enough to see each man disappear through the twinkling light of the anomaly and then the anomaly wink out as suddenly as a candle in a draught.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

"Look out there, he's coming round."

Nick Cutter blinked as the darkness began to fall away and images began to swim into focus.

"Wh-where am I?" Cutter muttered the obligatory phrase as he tried to take in his surroundings. Suddenly Lester leaned over him.

"You are in your own bedroom in the house you have had my men half demolish to make way for an expensive contraption which you promptly lost."

"Hello, Lester," Cutter groaned.

He tried to sit up, but found his head rebelled against him and forced him back onto the bed.

"Is everyone okay?"

"So it seems," Lester replied. "Mercifully you were the only candidate for your wife's slightly more old fashioned treatment. One can only suspect that the equipment she used to knock out an entire team of military persons and mad scientists was both future-bourne and slightly suspect. Either she did not wish to risk killing you or she wanted you conscious for some reason. Can you shed any light on which of these two it may be, Professor Cutter?"

"With Helen, it could quite easily be both or neither!" Cutter replied, risking raising a hand to his forehead. He winced as the hand made contact. "How long have I been out for?"

"Both you and everyone else here were unconscious when I and my reinforcements arrived. That was about one in the morning. People started coming round by about two: the ones up at the farm first. It is now just after seven o'clock and you are the only person here who has actually managed to get a good night's sleep."

Cutter grimaced. A few days ago he would have relished the chance to sleep for a good, solid eight hour stretch. Now all he wanted was to be up and mobile, tracking down Helen... and Jenny.

"There are a number of questions to ask you, Professor," said Lester, intruding upon Nick's thoughts. "The first one that springs to mind, however, is this: do you have any idea what has happened to Ms Lewis?"

Nick groaned again, vague flashes of memory tracing themselves across his brain.

"Helen happened," he replied, his head still swimming. "She has her. Took her through the anomaly. Anomaly closed."

"Yes, I'd noticed that," Lester clicked his tongue in thought, then moved away from the bed. "Well, I mustn't keep you from your rest. Sleep well."

Cutter listened to Lester's receding footsteps and closed his eyes again. In an instant, he was asleep.

XXXX

"Yeah, but, right," Connor was explaining avidly to Becker, "if it made it bigger last time, then maybe it can reopen it the same way!"

"You seem to be lacking one piece of equipment though," Becker told him sternly. "Namely: the imploder. Remember?"

"Ah! Well, you see, Nigel has had this great idea. It might work! Really!" Connor paused as Becker raised his eyebrows. "Aw, come on! It's worth a try, right? I mean: this is Jenny we're talking about! We don't get her back, we're not going to find another PR person willing to take on this job. I mean: d'you fancy it?"

Becker sighed and thought for a moment. He'd seen Nigel's design. It was doable. Just. He gave in.

"Fine! Give it a go."

"Great! I owe you one, mate!" Connor bounced off in the direction of Peta and her team.

Becker watched him rejoin the others then froze as he heard a quiet footstep behind him. He turned round and relaxed when he saw Lester.

"How are we doing then?" Lester asked. "I've just left the prone professor with slightly more information than I had before and the boy wonder over there looks as if he's just rediscovered the atom. Something is going on: do tell."

"They want to recreate the imploder using a partial sphere of fixed point electromagnets. They think that, in view of the imploder's original effect, this could reopen the anomaly."

"What: to exactly the right point in time and space?"

"They certainly seem to think so."

"Humph," Lester replied. "If they get that right, I'll dance the funky chicken in a hot-pink cat suit!"

XXXX

Abby Maitland watched Connor, Nigel and Peta bounce ideas off one another like normal people might kick around a football. She was sitting on an old, uncomfortable chair with half its stuffing hanging out and sipping a plastic cup of water in a bid to try and get rid of her nausea. It was probably just the effect of whatever Helen had used on her, but the nightmare she had had while unconscious hadn't helped. It was the same dream she'd had in Seahouses. Maybe it was just an odd reaction to sedatives, but it bothered her. She hadn't told Connor all the details of that dream: just that during it, she lost him. Now she wondered if it was simply that old fear of losing him that had brought it back, together with the sedative effect, perhaps. Or whatever it had been.

Abby took another sip of her water and considered her options. She could hardly talk to Connor about it: he was too busy and he wouldn't get it anyway. If Jenny had still been here, she might have considered talking to her. Even Cutter might have made a good listener, but he was out of action for now as well. She couldn't talk to Peta or Nigel: if it was just her own fear and jealousies, then they were part of the problem. There was no way she was talking to Lester about it. That just left Becker, but he was the new guy. What would he think of her spouting mad nonsense about recurring nightmares and 'bad feelings'. He'd probably just tell her she'd been watching too many of Connor's Star Wars movies.

XXXX

It was dark. It was cold. The air felt odd, tasted odd. Jenny Lewis frowned before she risked opening her eyes. The last thing she could remember was sitting at her laptop, typing, then suddenly: nothing. Had she fallen asleep? Passed out? She wasn't lying down. She was sitting in a chair. Her head was unsupported and hanging forward awkwardly. Her neck ached from the strain. Some thing else ached too: her arms. They were tied behind her back. Tied. That meant nothing good. Leek? No, Leek was dead. Helen, then. Maybe someone new, but probably Helen. She was the proverbial bad penny. Always turning up. Always at the most inconvenient moment.

She forced her eyes to open, slowly. All the while, she fought to keep her breathing slow, steady. Perhaps they hadn't noticed she was awake yet, whoever 'they' were. She couldn't hear any movement: maybe there was nobody there.

Dim light filtered through her eyelashes, growing gradually brighter as she risked opening her eyes fully. She could see a dull, grey stony floor below her. Taking care to keep her head still, she let her eyes wander as far as possible. When they got to the extreme top of her limited vision, they stopped. She could see a foot. Two feet. Booted feet. She wasn't alone.

A foot moved. It lifted out of her range of vision and didn't come back down. A moment later, she heard a dull rasping noise. It sounded like a knife cutting fruit.

"I wondered how long it would take," said Helen smoothly.

Jenny looked up, the necessity for pretence now gone, to see Helen popping a slice of apple into her mouth. The older woman lowered the knife to the fruit and began to cut another slice.

"What do you want?" Jenny asked, not really expecting a straight answer.

"That's funny, Nick said the same thing," Helen smiled for a second, then her expression flashed back to serious and she leant forward in her chair, the foot that had been resting on a knee not meeting the floor again with a thud. Strangely, it reminded Jenny of a mother scolding her child. "You'd be surprised," Helen continued, "just how little of what I want actually concerns you. Yet you seem to be important. Each of you is, in a way, another piece of the puzzle."

Jenny decided it was time to try a different line of questioning.

"Where am I?"

"The future," Helen replied, her expression and posture remaining fixed.

"Why?"

"I'd like to say this is where it all began," Helen gave a short, sharp laugh, "and in a way it is. But you see this is really where it all ends. Civilisation. The human race. We're dying out as we speak. There is nothing above ground. The only life now remains below, in caves and tunnels hollowed out over years and prepared for this very eventuality. Amazing what a word in the right ear can do. It's a funny thing, though: I seem to have a choice ahead of me. A fork in the road. And I'm trying to decide which road to take. It doesn't matter if it's the right one: I just go back and do it all again with the other choice. Time travel's useful like that. Especially when you know how to use it properly."

"I hate to say it, Helen," said Jenny, her eyes narrowing, "but by the look of you, time travel isn't all it's cracked up to be. Not in the long term, anyway. Perhaps the phrase 'premature ageing' has died out in this era too, but you certainly look like you know what it means."

To Jenny's surprise, Helen's reaction to the insult was to burst out laughing. When she had regained her focus, Helen fixed Jenny with a quizzical stare.

"Why you're even starting to think like him," she said, "or maybe he's starting to think like you. It hadn't crossed his mind either."

Helen smiled and got to her feet, stretching.

"I assure you," she continued, "I'm looking great for my age."

Jenny took this in, keeping her eyes on Helen as she started to walk about the room. When she was out of Jenny's view, Jenny listened until she heard the quiet footfalls cease. It was then that she noticed the wall Helen had been sitting in front of was actually a large monitor in darkness.

"Oh, by the way," Helen drawled. "There's someone I'd like you to meet."

Jenny's eyes were drawn to the monitor as it flashed into life. She saw a cell-like room hewn directly out of white, chalky rock. The room had one occupant, who was currently huddled in a ball, seemingly asleep. As Jenny watched, her gaze transfixed, the figure uncurled and looked up at the ceiling of the cell, directly into the lens of the camera. Jenny's breath caught in her throat and her head swam as she recognised that face. Seconds later, her mind rebelling, darkness overtook her once again, and she slumped forward.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

"All clear!"

A faint hum circulated around the precariously balancing house, then nothing.

They hadn't known what to expect, so the house had been emptied on the off-chance that actually inducing the anomaly might do further damage and bring the whole structure down, crumbling around them. Luckily, so far, it hadn't. Unluckily, this was because they still hadn't reopened the anomaly.

"We just need to fine tune the frequency a bit more!" Nigel shouted from his seat at the computer. He tapped a few keys while Connor and Peta took some readings from the room. He glanced up at them when he had finished and looked over to Becker.

"Clear!" Becker shouted when the other two had moved out of the vicinity of the house.

Nigel clicked a button. The hum restarted. This time, it grew louder until, with a hiss like snow falling off a roof, the anomaly opened.

There was general cheering and applause from the crowd.

"Well done Nige," said Peta as she joined him at the computer screen. "What have we got then?"

Nigel cast a glance over the readings from the anomaly.

"So far, so good: all reading appear identical to the previous anomaly."

"So we're good to go?" Cutter asked, striding over with a pack already on his back. "If this thing closes, you can reopen it, right?"

"So it would seem," Connor grinned.

"Right," Cutter looked round and caught Becker's eye. "Becker, get your team together: we're going through. If you're not there in thirty seconds, I'm going on my own!"

Becker nodded, a wry grin tugging at the side of his mouth. Cutter wasn't the only one who had planned ahead. Becker nodded to a group of soldiers standing near him, each of whom also had a pack ready. They walked over and met Cutter at the anomaly.

"Hold on: what about me and Abby?" Connor asked, running to catch up.

"No, I need you here," Cutter replied firmly. "The more people we have at this end making sure this thing stays open, the better. Plus, if anything happens to me, Abby's the best reptile expert we've got."

Connor nodded, remaining mute as he watched Cutter, Becker and their team disappear through the shimmering gateway. He felt an arm slide through his and looked down to see Abby.

"He's right you know: we're much more use here," she said.

"Yeah, but what if he doesn't come back?"

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. In the meantime, let's just make sure he has the option, yeah?"

Connor nodded again and wandered back to the computer terminal. She knew his mind was going back to the Silurian anomaly: the time Cutter and Stephen had gone through and the door had closed behind them. They had been lucky then. Now they were going through with a deliberate aim of finding Helen and her rather disturbing army, according to Cutter's description anyway.

This time they might not be so lucky.

XXXX

"I think I'll leave you two to get aquatinted," Helen breathed lazily, her voice disembodied by the loudspeaker in the cell.

Jenny glared at what she thought, rightly, might be a camera.

"Oh, don't frown so much, my dear girl: you'll get wrinkles!" Helen continued. "Besides: you two have so much in common."

The intercom clicked off and Jenny looked round, turning her attention to the other occupant of the cell. They were so familiar, and yet so different. And they looked so scared.

Helen watched on the monitor as Jenny approached her cell-mate. A satisfied smile spread across her features. So far, everything was going to plan. She pressed a button on the console and examined her other prisoner. He was pacing. He looked worried. That was good.

She would have to leave him for a bit longer. She had business elsewhere. She would be back though. She wouldn't leave him all alone for too long. He had always been her favourite toy.

XXXX

"It all looks the same."

Cutter nodded his agreement. Becker wasn't a scientist, but he was observant. Everything did indeed appear to be as they had left it. He wandered over in the direction of the rocks and began climbing. Once he'd reached the top, his shoulders sagged in relief: the nothosauri were still there, just as they had been before. He climbed down again and rejoined the gradually expanding group.

"We're looking for any solid tracks," Becker explained, somewhat unnecessarily. "So far it's as though the tide has been in and washed any evidence of them away."

"We don't seem to be having much luck with tides these days," Cutter replied.

The two men turned and headed up the beach, keeping behind the line of men scanning the ground. The high tide mark was high up on the beach, high enough to suggest the beach was still in the process of being formed by erosion. One possible footprint was all they found before they had to move onto the shingle and grass tufts, then the grass itself.

Over the rise, their luck began to change. It was much more difficult to hide the presence of a large number of large men in grassland than on a sandy beach with high tides to wash away the evidence. The path led straight down the hill, towards the grove at the bottom of the slope that Nick had visited with Jenny.

The military members of the group entered the grove with caution. Cutter walked on with a resigned expression, as if he already knew what he was going to find there. He led the way straight to the spot where, not too long ago, he had stood with Jenny. Waiting for him, just as he had begun to suspect, was Helen.

She was alone, but not empty handed. With one hand she threw a small, round device up into the air and caught it again.

"I wondered how long it would take you," she said.

"What now, Helen?" Cutter snapped. "What do you want with Jenny?"

"Me?" Helen laughed. She stepped forward and ran a hand along Cutter's jaw line. "Oh, Nick: I'm just trying to do you a favour!"

"By taking Jenny away just as..." Cutter stopped, suddenly aware again of the presence of Becker and his men.

"Just as?" Helen prompted, biting her lip and tipping her head to one side to get a better look at him.

"You know fine well!" Cutter hissed. "Why else would you be waiting here?"

"Now, now Nick," said Helen, toying with Cutter's jacket. "You look as though you've been losing weight. You really should take better care of yourself you know. You could do with a woman in your life!"

"I had one!" Cutter's voice grew louder. "You took her away from me! Now give her back!"

"Certainly!" Helen said, stepping back a pace. "But which one would you like?"

"What?" Cutter's brow clouded in confusion.

"Well, it's you're choice, Nick. And," Helen laughed again, "no pressure, but the future does hang in the balance on this one. I can't be expected to do all the work, after all!"

"What are you talking about, you madwoman!"

"A simple choice, Nick, that's all. Who would you like returned?" Helen's smile grew wickedly and she leaned forward to whisper a few words into Cutter's ear. She laughed as the look of shock grew on his features, stepped back and, before Becker or his men could stop her, pressed a button on her gadget and disappeared in a flash of sparkling amber light.

Nick was still reeling from his wife's words as she disappeared in front of them. He took in nothing of the journey back to the anomaly. He slumped wordlessly into the chair brought forwards from the side of the room. Abby and Connor's ministrations and questions went unnoticed and unanswered. All he could think about were Helen's last three words:

"Jenny? Or Claudia?"

Fini

* * *

Cutter and company will return in "Bad Penny": /s/4541965/1/BadPenny


	14. Series 4

Episode 2 in my Primeval Series 4 is now up!

Look for **Primeval Series 4: Episode 2: He Ain't Heavy**

If you haven't already read the first episode, look for **Primeval Series 4: Episode 1: MIA**


End file.
